Taylor, writer and director of “The Help,” and director of the James Brown biopic “Get On Up,” is set to adapt and direct the new incarnation of “Heat.” Set in the present day, the series aims to examine issues of race, justice and inequality through the eyes of characters in Mississippi, where Taylor is from. Project is expected to be shopped to cable buyers in the coming weeks.

“The Help’s” John Norris is also on board as an exec producer with Taylor and Littlefield, who just won an Emmy for shepherding the MGM TV adaptation of “Fargo” for FX.

The 1967 pic (pictured), helmed by Norman Jewison, was a landmark film in the civil rights era as it starred Sidney Poitier as a police detective sent to investigate a murder in a small Southern town in the face of hostility from the local sheriff, played by Rod Steiger. It nabbed five Oscars, including best picture and best actor for Steiger.

Littlefield has history with “Heat of the Night.” During his long run as an NBC programming exec, he developed an earlier series rendition of the property that starred Carroll O’Connor and Howard E. Rollins Jr. That version of “Heat of the Night” ran four seasons on NBC and another four on CBS.

Why do another? I’m inclined to agree… but the fact remains that racism is still very much alive and well in the USA (see yesterday’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart), so until we can put that kind of hatred behind us we need to be reminded with shows like this to call it out for what it is… Misguided and wrong. And not just between blacks and whites, but for all racial and ethnic tensions.

I hope that they’ll do something that won’t leave the audience saying, “Didn’t we see this before??” That kind of thing drives me up a wall when I’m watching a movie based on a TV series, or vice versa.

The Carroll O’Connor version didn’t capture the flavor of the movie and was basically no different from any other crime procedural of the period. If this is a cable series they are probably looking to do something more realistic and adult–maybe like the Fargo series.